When high-school music director Bob Ratcliff mounted his motorcycle on the morning of June 21, he wasn’t expecting to end his day with a four-hour trip to the Placerville emergency room.

Josh Elder, ’06, and Ratcliff crashed their motorcycles during a scenic day ride through Icehouse Road—a small, winding path halfway between Tahoe and Placerville.

“Josh had just started riding motorcycles and I wanted to show him some nice places to ride,” said Ratcliff.

With Elder leading, the two entered a “blind corner,” where visibility of the oncoming road was very low.

“[Josh] went around and crashed in front of me. By the time I got around, I saw his bike going down,” Ratcliff said.

Surprised by Elder’s crash, Ratcliff also ended up crashing in an attempt to avoid hitting him.

“I locked up my brakes and started to lose control of my bike. I released the brakes and regained control and swerved my bike away from his, which ended up putting me on the side of the road,” he said.

During his maneuver to avoid Elder, Ratcliff sustained a hard blow to his right hip, resulting in a hematoma—a very severe bruise—on his right hip, along with nerve damage to his skin.

Elder was also injured in the crash, breaking his right ankle.

Both Ratcliff and Elder were wearing appropriate motorcycle gear—helmets, riding jackets and gloves—which helped them avoid more serious injuries, they said.

Elder and Ratcliff hitched a ride with a passerby to the Placerville emergency room, where Ratcliff spent the next four hours undergoing X-rays and tests, and Elder was treated for over three hours for his ankle injury.

Elder’s father picked him up, while technology director Tom Wroten drove his truck out to pick up both Ratcliff and the wrecked motorcycles.

Ratcliff’s Yamaha V-Star didn’t sustain heavy damage, so he rode the bike home from Wroten’s house. Elder’s Suzuki GS500F, however, no longer starts.

Elder, a newer rider, has decided to give riding a break for a long time.

“One close call is enough for a decade or so,” he said.

The most disappointing result for Ratcliff was that he couldn't take his annual summer trip, an important tradition of his for the past 27 years. During his college years Ratcliff would ride from Boise, Idaho, to Dallas, Texas, once following old Route 66 from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City.

Three years ago he biked 10,000 miles in four weeks, traveling from Sacramento to Nebraska, then backtracking to Teton National Park in Wyoming. He then followed the Rocky Mountains north through Canada, returning by way of the West Coast. And in all that time he remained accident-free.

"This was my first accident on the highway in 29 years of touring," Ratcliff wrote in an e-mail. "How’s that for luck?"